


Sleep

by rebel_wren



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mentions of Pregnancy/Birth, Mentions of canon character death, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Motherhood, Nightmares, Post-Partum Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, kinda fluffy kinda angsty, mostly angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 17:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18503770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebel_wren/pseuds/rebel_wren
Summary: After having Jacen, Hera's nightmares just get worse and worse. One night, she happens to wake Sabine up after a particularly bad one.





	Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Divided is on a bit of a hiatus right now, if you haven't noticed. It's definitely not abandoned, I have so much planned and outlined for it, and I even have Chapter 15 half-written. It's just that it's at roughly a halfway point (possibly a little less than half) and I wanted to give myself a break. In addition, my personal life has been crazy busy too...
> 
> In the meantime, I'll be writing these short little ficlets again. I've got a big list of ficlet ideas on my phone that I've been slowly narrowing down. (I've also got a big list of longer fics on there too to write, and *gasp* even some non-Star Wars fic ideas!), and I want to get through them more.
> 
> And if you aren't reading Divided, then I guess you can just ignore all of this. I hope you enjoy this little ficlet!

_ Just take a deep breath. _

_ They said this might happen. _

_ You get nightmares all the time anyway. _

Hera leaned against the kitchen counter in the  _ Ghost _ , and took a small sip of the glass of water she’d poured, trembling as she sat it back down.

_ But they’ve never been this bad. _

She could still feel the sweat on her forehead, and wiped at it with the sleeve of her pajamas.

Nightmares had been one of the only consistent things in her life for years now. They never varied too much- a mission going wrong, a ship failing on her in the air, being cornered by Imperial agents, Maul invading her mind again.

Losing a member of her family.

_ That one was real. _

Hera bit the inside of her lip. That was the last thing she needed to think about after the nightmare she just had.

It had been particularly vivid. She was captured by Thrawn and Pryce again, but this time with Jacen right with her. They’d ripped his tiny, green-haired form from her arms as he cried and screamed for her. She’d been powerless to stop them while they-

“Hera?”

Hera was jolted from her thoughts when she heard Sabine’s voice. She quickly tried her best to compose herself.

“Hey, it’s late. What are you doing up?”

Sabine raised an eyebrow, and folded her arms. “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

Hera forced a smile. “I just needed a drink. Remember, the doctors said I should make sure I stay hydrated after having the baby.”

Sabine looked Hera up and down, with the same look she got when she was comprehending the layout of a building.

“Didn’t they also say you could get nightmares?”

Hera nodded, and couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit. “You see right through me.”

“So,” Sabine said, pulling over two stools, sitting on one of them. “What happened?”

“Sabine.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll wake Zeb up.”

Hera shook her head, and turned away a little from Sabine. “It was just a nightmare. We all get them.”

“And whenever we do, you always make us talk about them. It helps us feel better, right?”

Hera folded her arms, and looked across the dark kitchen. “I’m fine. I just needed some water.”

She could hear Jacen start to cry from his crib (he always seemed to cry more when she was upset, oddly enough), and quickly walked back to her room. Sabine’s footsteps followed her, and Hera gently lifted Jacen from his crib, rocking him and cooing softly.

“Shhhh, shhhh, it’s okay,” Hera said, even if she had a hard time believing it herself. She continued to rock him gently, gently shushing him every so often. Sabine watched them quietly, the corner of her lips twitching up into a small smile.

Hera smiled down at him as he started to settle down again. He looked up at her with his father’s eyes, and Hera felt a swell in her heart that was hard to describe. He blinked slowly a few times, and Hera pressed a tiny, soft kiss to his forehead as he started to drift off again. She laid him back down in the crib, and placed a hand on the top of it. She looked down at him as he slept, feeling a sense of protectiveness.

_ You can’t protect him forever. _

Sabine stepped closer to her, but she was also looking at Jacen.

“In your nightmare-”

“Sabine.”

“Did something happen to Jacen?” Sabine finished.

Hera swallowed, still looking down at the small, innocent baby. “Yeah. But it’s not- it’s nothing. It’s normal.”

There was a pause, with the only sounds being from within the  _ Ghost _ ’s walls. It could only have been a few moments, but it felt like an eternity.

“You know,” Sabine said. “We can all protect him. He’s got a whole army of family.”

Hera laughed quietly, and finally looked up at Sabine.

“A whole army?”

“Pretty much.”

Sabine met her eyes, and they both smiled at each other. Hera put an arm around her and pulled her into a hug.

“Thank you, Sabine.”

Sabine returned the hug, and Hera held her, sighing deeply as she felt her shoulders finally lose the tension they’d built since she’d woken up.

Hera pulled away, and gently ran her fingers through Sabine’s hair.

“You need to get to bed, okay? It’s late.”

Sabine mock-saluted her. “I’ll get right to it, Captain.”

“It’s General,” Hera said, laughing. “And I mean it.”

Sabine laughed and left Hera’s room, the door closing behind her. Hera looked down at Jacen again, and gently rocked the crib while he slept peacefully. She sat down on her bed, and watched the crib from across the room for a few moments.

When she finally laid down, she drifted off almost instantly, into a perfectly calm slumber.

Until Jacen woke her up for a meal, of course.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why, but I love writing Hera getting some emotional support. She's been through so much, she just really deserves it I think.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this one! <3


End file.
